Y&R Fires Entire Breakdown Writing Staff

[janea4old]

The biggest example of why JG should be fired:  In a recent episode, Billy told Jack he has feeling for Chelsea (his rapist).  JG is going for the Billy/Chelsea rapemance.  It has obviously been seeming/hinting for months that Y&R might be going there, due to them bonding over her mental health crisis (which was gross in itself!) .... but I hoped they would stop and steer the ship before it got to romance.
But Billy saying it aloud would confirm they are going there.

I know most soaps have done rapemances but it was never okay.  No writer should have ever have done that. Nowadays execs should know better. It should be fireable.

[BetterForgotten]

Josh Griffith needs to go for the simple fact he has no creative energy left and has tanked at this show alone MULTIPLE times. The burnout will be real - especially as it was alleged he had a mental breakdown a few years ago when he worked with JFP. 
 

But Sony will ride it out until then - because he’s cheap. 

[janea4old]

I definitely agree and we've all been saying that for a long time!  And then the burnout coming due to doing it all himself.

I'm just saying that rapemance *ought to be* a fireable offence.  It apparently isn't, but it should be.  If it were, it would be a way to get rid of him.

[Contessa Donatella]

That's a great idea but with the history in the industry as to rape, violence against women, sympathetic portrayals of rapists as romantic figures, ... we couldn't be further away from it. 

[Faulkner]

Also, given what we know about the approval process from various sources, the execs had to sign off on such a story, which shows where they stand on this issue.

[edgeofnik]

@Toups Isn't it odd that Deadline, THR, Variety haven't covered this story? It's highly unusual for Deadline to skip out on this type of story considering the amount of content they generate daily, including big stretches to cover '45' for clickbait! LOL It makes me wonder why those outlets are silent.

WGA negotiations officially start in 3 weeks (March 20). I wonder if this was a ploy by Sony to hire Fi-Core writers in the event of a strike.

[Broderick]

That's very interesting (to me).

Based on what I gathered from Kay Alden's discussion of her experience circa 2005, the cumbersome process had basically turned a Head Writer into "an overworked editor" and "an overworked proofreader", who went around with a briefcase full of tentative thrust documents, approved thrust documents, tentative breakdowns, approved breakdowns, script drafts, and completed scripts -- all from different timeframes.  You might be writing a thrust document for the first week of April, then editing breakdowns for the last week of March, then proofreading a completed script for the third week of March.  It was too entirely too mechanical and seemed to be stifling creativity entirely.

I can understand the network and SONY wanting to know the long-term story material.  But having to present a weekly "thrust document" to executives from the network and SONY seems downright comical to me.  What could they possibly contribute to it?  And then having to present breakdowns to those same executives a few days later is equally absurd.  Again, the executives' input is creatively worthless.        

The creative process of being a head writer is probably stressful enough (generating storyline ideas and utilizing the cast in accordance with their contract requirements), without having to "appear before the principal" like a high school kid several times a week with big stacks of papers to get approved, and then "grading papers" like a teaching assistant.  I'd hate it.    

[lucaslesann23]

Billy and Chelsea were together before in 2014 when Justin Hartley came on.

[dragonflies]

 

[janea4old]

The previous Billy/Chelsea rapemance (with Burgess Jenkins playing Billy) shouldn't have happened then, either, regardless of whoever wrote that then. As I said in my earlier post, most soaps have done rapemances but it was never okay.

My point was, that network execs and Sony should know better nowadays and put a stop to that crap.

Edited February 24, 2023 by janea4old

[mikelyons]

I've said privately that going to an hour was the worst thing that ever happened to soaps and I stand by it. Why?

Prior to the hour (and going back to the days of radio), the HW would submit a six month or yearly story bible to the ad agency, sponsor, and/or network during their big story conference. That's when the direction of the show would be decided and everyone would head home.

In radio, Irna would dictate her outlines and those outlines would be sent to her script writer. They'd return their scripts, the rep for the agency/sponsor would give her notes, and then they'd finish off the script and send it the producer. Elaine Carrington (Pepper Young's Family; Rosemary) wrote her own outlines & scripts. The Hummerts were producers and agency reps, so they were the first and last word.

When the soaps were fifteen minutes and thirty minutes, the radio process stuck. Irving Vendig wrote the scripts and breakdowns for SFT as did Agnes (before she was fired). Even when ATWT launched as half an hour, Agnes wrote the scripts from Irna's outlines. One script writer; one HW. Claire Labine noted that she and Paul would sometimes write their own scripts for Love of Life and Ryan's Hope, but they did use script writers. As it's already been stated, Bill Bell wrote his outlines and scripts for Y&R in the early days, before he found other script writers. However, he always wrote his outlines as did Agnes in the early years of OLTL and AMC.

Going to an hour famously blew up a system which worked and gained so much viewer attention. Intimate, tight stories about a family or a few people in a town under the vision of one writer and a small team of script writers worked. The hour doubled storyline, gave networks more control, made every show hire a team of associate head writers and breakdown writers, and more script writers. Head writers were so removed from their stories by the time the episodes aired that they bore little resemblance to the intention (as stated previously). 

Y&R was able to maintain script quality for so long because Kay Alden, as associate head writer, edited every single Y&R script from the 70s until she was fired. Ron Carlivati doesn't even read the Days scripts; his script editor edits and approves them. Brad Bell barely provides oversight of the daily scripts. He simply tells Michael Minnis the scope, Michael bangs out a rough outline (which says give 20% to Brooke & Ridge, 40% to Thomas and Hope), and the writers have a lot of leeway when it comes to writing their episodes, hence the mess you see on screen. (I used to have a bunch of B&B outlines, but I threw them away...along with ATWT & GL scripts from 2004. Big mistake.)

Soaps do their best when the HW has a singular vision which is executed via episodic scripts. The UK soaps allow the series producer to set the story for the next year and their team of storylines work on breakdowns, but their pool of script writers is small which allows for quality even when their storyliners (who are coveted by primetime) move on. Hollyoaks fired their entire producing team, storylining team, and most of their long time script writers two or so years ago and it's suffered ever since. 

[Aback]

It does look like an incredible waste of time.

[Broderick]

An hour of original drama is too unwieldy for one person to control creatively on a daily basis (IMHO).  Bill Bell was lucky in 1980 when his show went to an hour, because he'd been training Kay Alden for 6 years, and she'd learned his "style", what he wanted from a scene, from an episode, from a story arc.  He said later that he could review a script and honestly couldn't tell if Kay had written the dialogue or if he'd written it himself; she'd learned to impersonate him that well.  Most writers aren't fortunate enough to acquire a protégé who can follow their thought process that well. 

But it came from writing side-by-side at his dining room table and him looking up and telling her, "That's overwritten, Kay.  Simplify it.  Cut those six lines into four lines. Try this ..." 

Even so, Y&R fell apart when it went to an hour, because the process was now spread among Bill Bell, Kay Alden, Jack Smith, Elizabeth Harrower, and a couple of others. 

Things didn't get smoothed-out again until Sally Sussman was hired in 1982 and brought some fresh ideas into the room, and learned to write in the same style as Bell and Alden. 

I can't even imagine being Harding Lemay when "Another World" went to 90-minutes. 

I agree -- an absolute waste of time and energy.  That breakdown is WAY overwritten.  I've seen others that say, "Lily and Devon disagree, and Lily is hurt by his attitude."  That's it.

I expect Josh Griffith and Amanda Beall will write shorter, more concise outlines than the example presented here.  Plus they'll have the outlines themselves at the weekly Executive Meeting, which means the "thrust document" can be omitted from the process entirely, saving even more time and energy.  Also the second weekly meeting (to review the outlines) will be unnecessary, since the outlines were presented at the first meeting instead of the (absurd) thrust document.          

[Contessa Donatella]

No kidding! And, at that point he was already dissatisfied with the expansion to an hour & had not at all gotten what he'd hoped out of the hour show. 

"Then there's the current craze: expanding serials to an hour. It took serials 11 years to fully master the half-hour. ATWT and EON were the pioneers in 1956 & the cycle was completed in 1967 when SFT & GL finally went to 30 minutes. A half-hour seemed the ideal length for serials, but once the hour was tried with AW, the networks were impressed that the ad revenue would be greater if they simply expanded their most popular shows. An understandable notion, but it is not working." - Pete Lemay

[janea4old]

Ack, I posted this earlier and it turns out it was the WRONG information!  This is NOT a breakdown. This is NOT a breakdown.
*It's a summary* *It's a summary*.
Ryan tweeted a correction later on.   

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https://twitter.com/SourceRyan/status/1628998600121360390

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by janea4old